Coworkers with God

Dannah Gresh: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth says we work with and for God. We’re also dependent on Him.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: We can’t make dead forests come to life again. We can’t make holy buildings for God come to be, apart from the grace of God that is given to us.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free, for May 8, 2024. I’m Dannah Gresh.

If I asked you about your coworkers, you’d probably list the people you rub shoulders with at your job, maybe the main folks you work with day in and day out, or the little ones in your home—I’m not sure I’d call them coworkers exactly.

But most of us wouldn’t think to mention the Lord as our coworker. Today Nancy shows us how and why we can. She gave this message in a Revive Our Hearts’ chapel when all the Revive Our Hearts’ Ambassadors had gathered at Revive Our Hearts in Michigan. Let’s listen.

Nancy: Open the Scripture to 1 Corinthians chapter 3. We’re just going to do a flyover to such a rich passage. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking back, a lot of reflecting on what God has done in my life.

I’ve been going through some old journals. I came across some message notes on August 27, 2001, exactly one week before the day that Revive Our Hearts launched, September 3, 2001. I’d been asked to speak at a regional conference of the National Religious Broadcasters, Western NRB, and I was led to speak on this passage.

I’m not going to share today what I shared in that session, but there were things that God was putting on my heart as we were moving into the start of Revive Our Hearts, that He was speaking to me about being a messenger for such a time as this.

But I want to look at it from a little different angle today. And in the context here, people were comparing different servants of the Lord—Paul and Apollos were the two best-known ones. And Paul, in addressing that, uses two metaphors in this passage. And, again, we’re just going to hit the top of it, but give you some things to think and pray about.

The first metaphor is an agricultural one, and the second metaphor is an architectural one. He looks first at agriculture and then at architecture.

So first, beginning in verse 5, and I’m jumping right into the middle of a really rich passage here. Beginning in verse 5, Paul says, “What then is Apollos? What is Paul? They are servants.”

Now, later in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 1, he will use that word, but it’s a different Greek work. The one he uses later is the word that we talk about being under-rowers, fellow under-rowers. That’s the word he uses later.

Here it’s a different word, and it’s a word you would apply more to a waiter, a busboy, a water boy, somebody who doesn’t have a very significant role on the totem pole.

And so Paul says, “Who’s Apollos? Who’s Paul?” These were the most famous spiritual leaders of their day. And he said, 

They’re servants, [water boys, busboys], through whom you believed, and each has the role the Lord has given. I planted. Apollos watered. But God gave the growth. So then, neither the one who plants, nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. (1 Cor. 3:5–7)

So think about this servant term. You don’t name restaurants after busboys. You don’t name ballparks after water boys. You don’t build monuments to the servants. You don’t build movements around servants. The goal of our labors together is always to put a spotlight on the Master, on God.

And as His servants, we are planting seeds (using the agricultural picture here). We are watering. We are fertilizing those seeds. But only God can bring the growth. He gives that growth as we, His servants, patiently and faithfully fulfill whatever the role is that He has given to us in that whole big picture.

 

And then there’s the promise, as we come to verse 8, that He will reward each servant for their faithful labors. We don’t have the same roles. We have different roles, different callings, different positions, different responsibilities. But He will reward each one for doing faithfully what He has given them to do.

So look at verse 8: 

Now he who plants, and he who waters are one. [I don’t care what your title is in this ministry, what your job description is, we are one.] And each will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God’s coworkers. (vv. 8–9)

Now, it’s all I can do not to stop on every one of those words because they’re so precious, and they’re so important, but I just want to give an overview here. And what is the reward that He will give to each one of us for faithfully fulfilling the labors He’s given us to do in the Body of Christ and in this ministry? What’s the reward?

Well, the reward is fruit for our labors. He will give that reward. We’re not looking for earthly rewards, for monetary rewards. That’s not why you came to this ministry. You didn’t come here to get rich in earthly terms, but we are going to get rich in spiritual terms, and in terms of lives that are transformed by the power of the gospel.

I knew nothing about golf until I married Robert Wolgemuth, and now I’ve become a fan. So, if you’re a golf fan, you know that the PGA Championship, one of four majors, begins today. They got off to a late start because they had a frost delay. I checked it this morning in Rochester, New York. This championship is being played at a place called Oak Hill Country Club in upstate New York.

One of our Ministry Partners has a son-in-law who is playing in the PGA Championship. He sent me an article about this country club, and here’s just a paragraph that I found intriguing in light of this passage. It was kind of a history of this Oak Hill Country Club, and it said:

At the time it first opened for play in 1926, Oak Hill did not have ancient oaks. It did not have many trees of any kind.

And if you look at pictures of it today, it’s just beautiful—these big, massive oak trees just lining these . . . what do you call them? Fairways. Thank you. I’m still an amateur. (laughter) 

Its wooded aesthetic took root through the efforts of one of its members, John R. Williams, who was a physician and a horticultural enthusiast. Proclaiming his belief in the Almighty as “The greatest landscape architect of all,” whose plans called for Oak Hill to live up to its name. 

He’s saying, “God wants this place to live up to its name.” Williams assumed the role of Johnny Appleseed. Sprinkling so many seedlings on the ground that he claimed to have lost count at 75,000 seeds planted. And now this article said, 

Giant oaks remain a defining Oak Hill feature.

When he was planting those 75,000 or more seeds, he could not have envisioned, other than in his mind’s eye, what this Oak Hill Country Club would look like someday. But it didn’t happen overnight. The reward didn’t come overnight. He probably didn’t live to see the fruit of those seeds that he planted, but we get to enjoy that today.

I saw another similar article with a similar point recently that just was intriguing to me. It’s an article about a renowned Brazilian photo-journalist who spent years documenting the Rwandan genocide. When he returned back to Brazil, the home where he’d grown up, he was physically and emotionally spent, just exhausted from all the atrocities that he had seen during this war.

When he got home, he was shocked to see that the place where he had grown up, where he had lived, or the place he called home, which had once been a lush, tropical rainforest, was now stripped and barren due to a process of deforestation. The trees were cut down; the whole environment was changed. There were almost no trees, and the wildlife was all gone. It was devastating.

And this article said, “What to do in the face of such massive environmental carnage? It can make the individual feel small and helpless as we ponder the impact that we can actually make.” (There’s so many parallels here to what we’re trying to do as we live in the spiritually environmental carnage all around us.) And, said the author of the article, “Will anything that we do make the slightest bit of difference?”

Well, Brazilian photographer, Sebastiao Salgado, and his wife, Leila decided to show what a small group of passionate, dedicated people can do by turning deforestation on its head and beginning the process of reforestation—revival, if you will. Salgado said, 

The land was as sick as I was. [Having just come off the years in that war-torn country.] Everything was destroyed. Only about .5% of the land was covered in trees. And then my wife had a fabulous idea to replant this forest. She believed the land could be restored to its former glory.

So what did they do? They started to plant trees—one tree at a time. One sapling at a time. Over the next twenty years, they planted two million trees.

The aerial photographs of what it was like when they got back to Brazil, just stripped of trees, stripped of wildlife, and then the sequence over the years and what it looks like today . . . it’s barely recognizable as the same topography. Totally changed. The barren land turned into a fruitful land. This man said, 

When we began to plant trees, all the insects and birds and fish returned. And thanks to this increase of the trees, I, too, was reborn.

He’d come back sick, exhausted, feeble, faint, frail from all that he’d experienced in war, and he experienced a revival of sorts because of the exercise of reforesting that deforested land.

And together this couple founded a small organization that has since planted 4 million additional trees, saplings, and has brought the forest back from the dead. One tree planted at a time over the course of many years.

I re-read it again this morning, and I just think of Revive Our Hearts. I think of what we’re doing. I imagine the lives over these past twenty-some years of planting seeds, Johnny Appleseeds, one at a time, investing into the lives of women. And I think, Only God knows how many trees, how many saplings have been planted and are thriving today.

Most of them we won’t know about until we get to heaven, and that’s probably a good thing. But then think over the next twenty years, how many more saplings could be planted, how many more lives could be impacted. And how this barren landscape of the world in which we live could come to life again. That’s revival.

One of the passages that God has used in my life many times, especially in my years as a single woman not having children. I love that passage in Isaiah 54. It’s just the first few verses, and it says: 

“Rejoice, childless one, who did not give birth;
burst into song and shout,
you who have not been in labor! 

For the children of the desolate one will be more
than the children of the married woman,”
says the Lord.”

I can remember years ago journaling about this passage in my journal, and it says this (this is before Revive Our Hearts): 

“Enlarge the size of your tent,
and let your tent curtains be stretched out;
Do not hold back;
lengthen your ropes,
and drive your pegs deep.” 

[Gotta have deep pegs if you’re going to lengthen and broaden the scope of the tent.] 

“For you will spread out to the right and to the left,
and your descendants will dispossess nations
and inhabit the desolate cities.”

I was saying “amen” to those promises of God before we ever had an organization called Revive Our Hearts. I was saying, “Lord, I don’t know what place You have for me. I don’t know what part You want me to have. I don’t have children. I don’t have a husband (at the time), but I believe You can make me fruitful. I believe You can work supernaturally through my–change the metaphor–loaves and fishes to feed multitudes.”

And I began to pray, “Lord, I want to walk by faith. I want to stretch out. Enlarge the tent, the size of your tent. Let your tent curtains be stretched out. Lengthen your ropes. Drive your pegs deep.” Be grounded in God’s Word and in His ways. And the promise that your descendants—you will have descendants, multiple generations, and they will dispossess nations and inhabit the desolate cities.”

God’s doing that. Not just through us, but through many of His people—pastors, church leaders, women, churches, Christians in all kinds of vocations, using us to plant seeds in what has been a barren land and will one day be a thriving place of life.

You know, we see glimpses of this, those who get to read the emails and see what God is doing and hear the stories. I heard a few this morning that fit in this category. But let me just read a few to you that’s come across my screen or my mail recently.

I received a note last week with an envelope with a few notes from a group of women. They didn’t even tell us where they were from, what church they are, who they are, but the one said, “Nancy and team, we just had our annual ladies’ retreat for our church. We are a very small group. Eight of us went on the retreat. For our lessons we listened to your teaching on “Brokenness” from last February.

I cannot tell you how much it blessed us. There were tears, worship, confession, true brokenness, and just a beautiful spirit of humility. We’ve each brought it home to our families, too. God bless you and your ministry.

That’s a tree—eight trees, eight saplings in that church. Here’s another one from this past week: 

Thank you for sharing The Risen Motherhood podcast. It has been timeless. I’m a mom of four, ages seven to one. This morning I struggled to put clothes on with postpartum body image swirling in my head. I dressed and disheartedly walked downstairs to do my normal quiet-time routine. I popped on the podcast, and the first thing discussed was postpartum body image. Thank you, God, thank you, Revive Our Hearts.

[And she said, ]“This last month I have felt extra drained, and feelings of failure have risen up within me. I know raising these babies is valuable and priceless, but sometimes I try to carry the weight rather than give it to Jesus. Thank you for these reminders. God bless you all with a thankful heart.”

That’s a tree, planted, coming to life. And then a note I received last week from the leader of one of our international teams. She said, 

Dear Nancy, 

As I prepare to celebrate my twenty-fifth wedding anniversary tomorrow, I am so overwhelmed with gratitude to you for your faithful teaching over the years and for letting the Lord use you.

I’m so thankful that as I look at my marriage, I can see the promise of Psalm 1:3 being fulfilled in increasing measure, and a large part of that is due to the biblical teaching I’ve had from you over the past nine years. When I came to know Revive Our Hearts, God confronted the traces of feminist thinking I had, and He has been at work ever since. I didn’t even realize there were so many projects in my life for God to work on, but He has been gracious in showing me them one by one.

First, challenging my agenda and priorities. Then my issue of control. Moving on to my fears over my kids and ambitions for them to be successful and what that really meant in God’s eyes. The list goes on. Right now I’m crying out for a more humble heart that is more compassionate and patient.

Praising God for His utter faithfulness and for yours, not just mine, but yours, much love in Christ.

Now that woman is leading a team in a country that may be the next place to take off after along the lines of what we’ve seen happening in the Spanish-speaking world. Another seed, another tree. And these lives, and so many more like them, many in this room, they are the reward for our labors. They are the reward for our service.

And so Paul says in the next verse, 1 Corinthians 3, verse 9, “We are God’s coworkers.” Isn’t that an amazing thing for God to be willing to be called these busboys, this wait staff, water boys, to call us His coworkers?

And then Paul references these two metaphors. We’ve been looking at the first one, the agricultural one. “You are God’s field,” he says. But then he switches to a different word picture, “You are God’s building.” Now we have the architectural. Let me just take a few moments on that.

Verse 10: “According to God’s grace that was given to me.” Don’t even try to live out either of these metaphors apart from the grace of God. You can’t do it. We can’t make dead forests come to life again. We can’t make holy buildings for God to come to be apart of, from the grace of God that is given to us.

According to God’s grace that was given to me, I have laid a foundation as a skilled master builder, and another builds on it. But each one is to be careful how he builds on it. (vv. 9–10)

Now, what first turned my mind to this passage a couple weeks ago when I began thinking about this chapel was the fact that we have some remodeling work going on in our home. I’m not a builder. I don’t know anything about building. I just see walls. I have no idea what’s behind those walls. But now I’m getting some idea of what’s behind those walls because I’m seeing things change in our house.

And let me just tick off some of them, as I’ve been thinking about us being builders with God, and thinking about what’s going on in our house. These are just some pretty obvious observations I’m making.

First of all, it’s a long process, building is. It takes planning much longer than I could have imagined.

It takes patience—much more patience than I could have imagined. I’m going, “They have spent two weeks in this little room. What in the world could be taking so long?” Patience.

It’s hard work—painstaking hard work. I’m watching these guys, and they’re sweating and working hard, and exhausted at the end of the day.

It’s messy work. I wanted to bring you some pictures, but that didn’t happen. It’s a mess in the place where they are working!

It’s disruptive. We’ve had to change our rhythms and where we do what because the places where we normally use for certain aspects of lives, now they’re a mess, and we can’t get into them.

It’s expensive work—more than I ever could have imagined. You know, they give you the first quotes, and then it’s, “Well, we didn’t realize that didn’t include this and this and this and this and this and this.” By the time you’re done, you’re going, “Wow! This is expensive! What could possibly cost that much?”

There’s tons of decisions to make about the littlest things and the biggest things. And then you realize you’re going to live with how you answer those questions. What decisions you make, you’re going to live with those for longer than we’re going to live because we do hope this is our last remodeling.

This building process takes a lot of people with different gifts and different experience. We had the other day a train of these people, or trail, walking in and out of the house–—some builders, some planners, a designer—just people who were coming in and out checking things. I’m looking around, and they all have different gifts. They have different strengths, different areas of expertise.

It’s important to select the right contractor. And what a joy to look around this room and think of the people online today who are part of the team that God has raised up as we are building something beautiful for the Lord.

There are mistakes that are made in the process, and you have to keep breathing grace in and breathing grace out.

And then here’s something that has struck me: you have to tear out the old when you’re remodeling before you can build the new in its place. Demolition. We’ve had some demolition going on in our house, and more to come over the next weeks.

The contractor told me when he tore out the blown insulation in the ceiling of this particular bathroom, he found four dead mice up there. I’m sure there are more up there . . . and all the mess that comes with them.

You have to get rid of old or useless or damaged stuff. Not just in the building, but the things you were putting in those cabinets. In fact, I’ve been going through like a woman on a mission. I have this big huge binder in our laundry room that has warranties, information about lots of different things in our house. I threw most of them out, but I saved a few to show you because you’ll be glad to know I’ve kept all these.

There are two sets of instructions for two different models of cordless speaker phones. I don’t need those anymore. (laughter) There are instructions for a boom box. I don’t need that anymore. (laughter) For an iron—I’ve kept that—how to use your iron. (laughter) For an ironing board; I’ve still got that. (laughter) For a coffee maker that we don’t have anymore. We used it a lot. I don’t need those instructions anymore.

Let’s see what else we have here. Oh, this is for a basketball hoop we used to have in our driveway. It is no more. Assembly instructions and owner’s manual. I don’t need that anymore. Two and four-slice toasters. If you need instructions, come get ’em. (laughter)

And then this one is for . . . what do you call that thing, Honey? A weedwacker, but the instructions are in Spanish. (laughter) I’m going to send that to our friends at Aviva Nuestros Corazones because they might need that. (laughter)

Okay, here’s the point: I don’t need those things anymore, so why am I keeping it at my house? Because I needed to stop and take time to purge, to get rid of useless stuff. That’s what we’re helping people do in their lives. That’s what we need to keep doing in our own lives. Part of this building process, you have to get rid of old, useless or damaged stuff before you can build the new thing.

Each one is to be careful how he builds on it. For no one can lay any foundation other than what has been laid down. That foundation is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw [two very different kinds of building materials] each one’s work will become obvious. (vv. 10–12)

The contractor I’m using, we’ve been talking kind of about this building process. He’s talking about how some builders cut corners trying to save cost. But he said they always show up later and then you have to fix those mistakes. And it makes remodeling more difficult. “Each one’s work will become obvious.”

He also said, “I’m old school.” And he said, “There are new products that come along for building houses that salesmen convince builders to buy. Some of them cost twice as much, but that doesn’t mean they’re better.” He talked about some of these. He said, “Some of these things they use on houses now—that pink wrap, Tyvek—doesn’t last long; not nearly as long as the old ways of doing things that last way longer.”

When you think how we’re building, what materials we’re using, whether they’re materials that will last—gold, silver, costly stones—or things that are going to go up in flames—wood, hay, and straw.

Each one’s work will become obvious for the Day [What is that day? The final day. That day. Judgment day] will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test the quality of each one’s work. [Not just mine, but yours and yours and yours and ours.] If anyone’s work that he has built survives, he will receive a reward. [There’s that promise again. Whether you’re using the agricultural metaphor or the architectural metaphor, a field or a building, there will be a reward.] If anyone's work is burned up, he will experience loss, but he himself will be saved—but only as through fire. (vv. 13–15)

In this season, when our house is a mess, stuff everywhere—they’re being neat as they can be—but there’s a lot of noise. We’re supposed to do a video tomorrow, and there’s no way we can do it in our house. There’s just people coming in and going. It’s inconvenient, but it really helps to keep your mind on the outcome, on what you’re looking for, what you hope the end will be.

Keep your eye on the reward as we’re serving the Lord. Keep your eye on the finish line.

You know the name George Whitefield, the British evangelist that was so greatly used of God in the First Great Awakening. He said that the only epitaph he wanted on his tombstone was this: “Here lies George Whitefield. What sort of man he was, the Great Day will discover.”

Anybody who’s studied revival, we think we know a lot about George Whitefield. People thought they knew a lot about him. He was famous in his day. But he’s saying, “The true man that I am, that Day will reveal.”

So Paul says, verse 16: 

Don’t you yourselves know that you are God’s temple and that the Spirit of God lives in you? [We could park there a long time. We won’t.] If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is holy, and that is what you are. (vv. 16–17)

You’re holy. You’re God’s temple.

And So Paul has said we are God’s coworkers. We labor with Him, planting and watering seeds in a field. And as builders, building on the foundation of Christ. He says to us, “In that work, in that labor (and it is labor, by the way), each one is to be careful how he builds on that foundation.” Not sloppy, not careless, not taking shortcuts, not trying to cut costs—spiritually speaking—but to be careful how we build on it.

So we’re laboring with Him, planting seeds, building this building, but we’re not only God’s coworkers, laboring with Him, we’re also God’s projects. He says, “Not only are you planting and watering, you are God’s field. You are a field that He is wanting to bring to have lots of beautiful fruit on it. And you are God’s building. You are God’s temple being built up to be a holy temple for God.”

If we lose sight of that, we can get stuck in the work we’re supposed to be doing, to labor in the field, to labor in building, and all of us do that every day. We’ve got to be careful how we do it and what materials we use. But if we only see that side of this message, we’re going to forget that not only are we working with God and for God and to serve others, God’s also working on us, in us, through us. You are God’s field. You are God’s building—a holy temple being built up for the Shekinah glory—God Himself to fill us.

That beautiful Brazilian rainforest that’s been restored, it’s magnificent. That magnificent Oak Hill Country Club where that doctor planted 75,000 trees, or that couple in Brazil planted 2 million trees, they’re fabulous. But they don’t light a candle to what God is doing in and through us in this season and in this world. Let’s pray.

Father, thank You for these fresh words to my own heart. Timeless words. Old words. But new and fresh today to me, and I pray to all of us.

Thank You for the unbelievable privilege of being coworkers with You, of being laborers, of working in Your field, of working on the building, the temple You are building—Your Church—to be a place for Your glory to dwell.

Thank You that You’re not only working through us, we’re not only working for You. Help us to do that well. Help us to be careful how we build, every one of us. There’s that oneness in this passage. We are one. Not one is more important than the other. But there’s also that individual responsibility. “Each one will receive a reward for his own labor.”

So I pray for my brothers and my sisters who labor today. Would You give them grace? Would You give us grace? Would You give us dependence and humility, leaning hard on You, never ever thinking we can do this without You?

Give us faith to see what the outcome could be, and will be. Amen and amen.

And then, as we labor, may we be reminded that we ourselves are a field, we are a building that You are working on. Thank You, Lord, after sixty years, precious years, of walking with You, of serving You, of growing in You, that You’re still working on me and in me today. You’re still wanting to bring forth a better field, more fruitful land, and that takes digging up old stuff, replacing it with new.

Thank You that You’re still remodeling, remaking, rebuilding my heart, my life, that it may be a home for You where Your glory can dwell.

So, Lord, as we serve others this day in so many different places of the vineyard or the field or the building site, whichever metaphor we want to use, oh God, would You bring out of all this something that can’t be explained in terms of us. All our labors, all our time, all our work, all the funds that partners have generously sent us, but all that put together could not do, can’t begin to do what we’re believing You to do with raising up women around the world who will take Your presence and Your glory to their homes, their churches, their communities, their countries, and this world.

And all of it, Lord, so that You can get the honor and the glory forever and ever.

Dannah: Amen. Thank you Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth for those helpful and encouraging thoughts from 1 Corinthians chapter 3. We’re coworkers with God. What a cool concept.

And that’s how we view ourselves here at Revive Our Hearts. Our mission, our field, our vineyard, our building site is to call women all over the world to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

And we want to help you serve those around you, too. We do that through our radio programs, podcasts, our events, and our resources. It’s truly a partnership, though. We can’t do any of what we do without your prayers and your financial support. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

Now, I will say donations to Revive Our Hearts have been lower than we’ve been hoping for in recent months, and the month of May is crucial for our Revive Our Hearts’ team as we close one year of ministry and look ahead to our next ministry year.

We’re asking God to provide $838,000 here in May, and we need to hear from you. Would you prayerfully consider making a donation to Revive Our Hearts? When you do, we’d love to express our appreciation by sending you a 30-day devotional called Living Out the One Anothers of Scripture.

To give and request your copy of the devotional, just contact us at ReviveOurHearts.com, or call 1-800-569-5959.

This month we’re talking a lot about serving one another. Well, some of the world’s most self-sacrificing servants are . . . Mom. That’s right. On tomorrow’s edition of Revive Our Hearts Kristen Wetherell will be here to talk about the disconnect moms sometimes feel—the disconnect between the things they do and their own heart attitudes, the gap between heart and hands.

I think you’ll get a lot out of tomorrow’s conversation whether you’re a mom or not. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.